Saturday, September 12, 2009

Peter Michael Hamel is probably best known for his totally righteous Voice of Silence release and his involvement in Between, a progressive unit that issued a couple of interesting records in the early 70's. As a composer and keyboard player, Hamel tapped into the cosmos and became a de-facto leader for the burgeoning New Age genre. A student of Indian raga and the avant garde , Hamel's work is not just pretty electronic music as Nada's second track "Silence", a piece for prepared piano can attest. Nada's highlight is the sidelong "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" : featuring four synthesizers and an electric organ that come together to create deep harmonic space complete with a dizzying bass gurgle and shot through with melodic rays. Highly recommended for fans of Emeralds and the Arbor label.

Friday, September 11, 2009

When you live in an area with a high concentration of art school graduates, trust funders and other assorted blights on society, everyone you know is in a band. On any given night a friend of a friend of someone's aunt or coke dealer has a gig happening and "you should totally come out." Needless to say, the majority of music being made here in the quaint borough of Brooklyn that manages to gain any exposure west of the river is generally either cleverly disguised pop garbage or the tepid work of post-punk grave robbers. Thankfully, among the desecrated ruins of a once thriving artisitic community,there remains bands of sonic warriors who toil in the terrible shadows of the blue blooded condominiums and under the radar of an increasingly homogenized rock club scene.

Source of Yellow; a Brooklyn trio consisting of bass, drums, sax, and a pletheora of electronics and assorted sound generators are a true beacon of light in the seemingly eternal talentless night that has fallen on the NYC music scene. Combining metronomically precise krautboogie ur-rhythms with walls of textured electronics and sparse inventive sax playing Source of Yellow play music that would have been right at home on both the Brain and ESP-Disk record labels. They are indebted to the great innovators of free music's past without cannibalizing them, blazing a new direction away from the necrophillic tendencies of modern music. They are finishing up an incredible full-length and have given me their blessing to share with you their entire performance at Matchless Bar in Greenpoint from 2009-08-17. Source of Yellow live at Matchless 2009-08-17